


The Boardwalk Job

by silveradept



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:31:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6322315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate sends Sophie in to find out who's buying and selling entire neighborhoods and Eliot to protect her. At an auction away from prying eyes, their silence speaks volumes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boardwalk Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TanyaReed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TanyaReed/gifts).



It had started out like any other job.

That it ended with Eliot trying to find a store open so late that also carried a very specific brand of orange juice made it much stranger than other jobs that he had done. He tried to avoid eye contact with any of the other shoppers while he replayed the day's events, trying to find what he had done well enough to deserve this. Or where he had screwed up so much that she was punishing him this way.

Nate had begun the briefing before Parker and Sophie arrived. It looked like any other job: a shadowy conglomerate of multinational interests that hid their shell corporations within shell corporations had taken an interest in several low-income neighborhoods. Those properties that they couldn't purchase outright found their mortgages purchased by one or another debt-servicing agencies, and as under any good post-Dodd-Frank corporation, the homeowners found themselves effectively paying double their previous costs, due to vague-sounding but properly above-board and documented "administrative fees" and "escrow account service costs" and many other things that Eliot hadn't understood fully, but which Nate knew well from his background in insurance.

Once the residents couldn't pay their mortgages, foreclosure followed swiftly, and unlike every other foreclosure in the era of the Great Recession, the process went quickly. Nate suspected the judges involved were taking bribes, but proving that would be part of Hardison's workload, along with creating identities and backstories for each of the team that would stand up to the many layers of scrutiny they were going to go through before, as Nate put it, "someone from a tiny company very far out on a supplier's chain offered them the chance to prove they were affiliated with the police or with someone not on the guest list, and thus not worth anyone's time." 

Hardison's explanation of what he'd done made it sound like the only reason the rest of them could even go on this assignment was because of his long hours fine-tuning details that would go unnoticed and unappreciated. Hardison was always a little uptight about his worth to the team. It made him an easy target for jokes and pranks, but it also meant he had an eye for details that others would miss. 

Eliot had heard Parker arrive by the upper floor window, and carefully arranged himself so Sophie would see him when she came in the front door at the same time that Parker arrived on the staircase. When Parker bounded through the door with a big grin on her face, Eliot added free climbing and rappelling to his list of "Things Sophie Can Do In a Pinch" and tried not to make it too obvious what he was doing as he turned to watch Sophie pour herself a glass of orange juice.

Without breaking his presentation, Nate brought a farmhouse up on the screen. "This is the most secure house in the city." he said. "There are no photographs of its exteriors or interiors on the Internet. Tax records for the house lead to shell corporations so deep that it would take an army of lawyers decades to figure out who actually owns it. Once a month, what appears to be a random fleet of consumer vehicles drives around to the back, into a covered garage, at intervals that follow the Fibonacci Sequence. All of the windows are tinted so its impossible to see anyone inside. Attempts at listening to what goes on inside are met with white noise, and occasionally, _The Marriage of Figaro._ That same sequence of vehicles will reappear exactly eight hours later, at exactly the same intervals. Either this is the President's vacation home, or someone is going to a lot of trouble to make sure nothing that goes on at this house looks suspicious in any way."

"That's our target, then." Eliot nodded. "What's the play, Nate?"

"As of yesterday, Leverage Holding, Incorporated, received an invitation to a very special auction for 'rare and unusual goods recently acquired', slightly after the U.S. District Attorney announced an investigation into the recent string of foreclosures that brought our client to us. If these people are going to get their houses back and not fall victim to the next scheme that comes their way, this auction is our only chance. Sophie, you're going to go in and get us what we need. Eliot, I need you to protect her in case things go wrong."

"All right, people. Let's steal a neighborhood."

_The rich and powerful take what they want. We steal it back for you. We provide...leverage._

Getting in had been relatively easy. The guards in the garage had checked their invitation and their identification, and then subjected them to a thorough and very invasive search, confiscating every piece of technology they could find, including Eliot's pocket watch, on the assumption that anything brought in could be a listening or recording device and that nobody's privacy was to be compromised even in the slightest.

"I hate monkey suits," Eliot had complained to Sophie after the search, as they surveyed the floor of the farmhouse. "They itch, they're hard to conceal anything in, and they restrict my movement too much." In Eliot's opinion, Sophie's dress had the perfect amount of slink and shimmer, hiding just enough that anyone looking at her would believe the next movement she made would show off something meant to be concealed. He knew it wouldn't, but he couldn't convince his eyes of that.

"That," she'd said, adjusting his bow tie imperceptibly, "is because American men believe that purchasing a suit from a department store and then tailoring that to an approximation of their bodies means the suit fits. A properly tailored suit starts with measurements, not color choices." Smiling at him, she added, "I think you look lovely. Now remember, once we get inside, no talking."

The people responsible for the auction had decided that the "silent" part of "silent auction" was the most important. Communication was to be written on notepads or otherwise expressed nonverbally, as an added precaution, just in case a listening device had escaped the thorough security check. When Eliot had wondered why they hadn't gone all-out and insisted on masks, the security guards response had been "privacy, not anonymity."

"Think of it," hed said, with a practiced chuckle, "like a modern version of the Diogenes Club."

Inside the farmhouse proper, small cases with trinkets and sheets of paper competed with appetizer tables surrounding a central square for mingling. Circling the tables produced some hors d'oeuvres and a good look at all of the objects. Eliot had examined a miniature White House, a tiny map of the Mediterranean Sea, and three different keychains of Midwestern and Appalachian states, just in case there was anything special about them, but he hadn't found anything, and was pretty sure looking at all the other objects would produce the same lack of results.

Only after looking at all the other guests at the party did Eliot realize that a) Sophie had slipped away from him and b) that he hadn't seen any other women at the auction, even though some had arrived in the cars. Maybe they were plants from whomever was selling the goods.

 _Dammit, Nate_ , he thought. _Parker should be here, just so that Sophie has someone else._

Eliot knew where Sophie would be. He went to the greatest concentration of men near the bar, where several of them were listening attentively to Sophie regaling them with the story of how she had successfully passed herself off as the Marquess du Carabas to a dictator that hadn't grown up with many fables in his life. In sign language.

Seeing her surrounded, silently laughing with all of these people--people who planned on demolishing entire neighborhoods and driving out all the residents, people whose skulls he was itching to crack just on principle, men that were not even subtle about their flirting or touching attempts--Eliot's knuckles twitched. He was supposed to protect her from them, and instead she was surrounding herself with them. Sophie in her element. She looked like she was enjoying herself.

Before he did something that would endanger the mission, he turned around to study the small artifacts again. Soon afterwards, Sophie brushed his arm with her hand, gave him a significant look, and then walked away. What had Nate said?

_"Sophie was raised to be charming, not sincere."_

Eliot didn't believe that, and not only because Nate had looked like he had been drinking when he said it. But he had thought he knew when Sophie was being charming and when she was sincere. Yet he had just been ready to compromise the entire operation because she was...flirting. Getting information. Grifting the marks, like she was supposed to do. His job was to protect her and to get the information outside the house. Just as soon as he (or she) could figure out where the information was.

Replaying the interactions in his mind, a detail he hadn't noticed before sprang to the forefront. Despite the many subtle and unsubtle attempts to get a hand on her, Sophie had always seemed to be just out of reach. Eliot had been working with her on self-defense recently, and it looked like she was putting many of those lessons about evading and keeping your opponents always in view to use. He smiled quietly to himself. Sophie could take care of herself. She just liked it more, it seemed, when he got to protect her.

He turned his attention back to the tables with the small objects in them. These trinkets were the lots up for auction, that was obvious, but he couldn't figure out what their significance was. If nothing else, working on the puzzle would give him a good reason not to hit anyone.

The trinkets kept him occupied until it was time for the auction to begin. Once it started, the auction moved smoothly. Eliot recognized the auctioneer as one of the women who had disappeared from the cars at the beginning. As each lot was brought in by an assistant, Eliot realized that the women he had seen arrive were the auction team. He wondered a bit about the virtues of an all-women auction team and a nearly all-men bidding group.

Everyone had a paddle that lit when the button on its handle was pressed. Each lot was displayed using a projector and what was probably the only authorized computer in the house. The bidding always started a little above the last written bid, and then would increase incrementally as each paddle lit, until the final price was agreed on. While the auctioneer never spoke a word, she still moved the bidding along at a professional pace.

There was a bidding war on a hot dog keychain when it finally clicked in his mind. _This lot is a Red Hot, the last lot was a keychain with a photo of blue grass, and the next lot is a used ticket stub for one lap around the Brickyard. Someone put a monocle on some of the cases near some of the lots before one of the goons took them all off, and here I am in the middle of all these wannabe landlords looking like they're having a great...time._

_Oh._

His sense of pride at understanding was quickly put in a sleeper hold by his realization that somehow, they still needed to get all the information on that computer out to Hardison and Nate before the party ended. It quickly became apparent that they had a very precise deadline, since the last slide of the presentation read, "This concludes the auction. Please enjoy yourselves. Cars will be by to pick you up starting at 8."

They had only two hours to finish the job, or it would be all for nothing. He was halfway into his first plan when Sophie returned from wherever she had gone.

"Just my luck," she signed to him. "I went to the bathroom and then I couldn't get back in for the auction. Something about security." Noticing his expression, she lightly tapped his nose. "Eliot, stop scowling. It masks your inner beauty. Come dance with me."

Without waiting for him to reply, she led him out onto the dance floor, took his left hand firmly in her right, settled her left arm over his, made sure he was touching her back, and gave him a look that said she expected him to lead. He took the hint, but his mind was still working on the job to be done.

He was almost three-quarters of the way through his first plan when she spiked his foot with her heel. When he looked at her, she spiked him with the other foot to ensure he was giving her his full attention.

"Eliot," she sign-shouted at him, "I did not come to this party, wearing this dress, for you to keep looking around like you need to catalog every exit and know where every guard in this house is. Right now, I want you to relax and _dance with me_ , or I will give you a _reason_ to kindle your jealousy."

"What about the reason we're here?" he signed back, much more subtly, to try and avoid being noticed by anyone else. "We need to get to that computer and find a way of transferring the data to Hardison."

"Oh, Eliot, I did that hours ago! When I went to the bathroom, I found the computer and sent the data to them. Everyone assumed I was part of the auction team, so the guards let me right in and out. The others are probably arranging for some showy arrest once everyone leaves here. Now will you relax?"

After careful consideration of this new information, Eliot decided on the best reply possible.

"Once you stop standing on my feet."

She did, so he did, and took her hand and waist much more willingly and enthusiastically. It was a rare opportunity for him to use his agility as a dance partner instead of dodging fists and weapons, and Sophie was definitely someone he could spend many nights dancing with. She seemed to be enjoying him as a dance partner as well, letting her hands stray a little bit from a formal dancing position and catch a quick squeeze of his arms. After a little while together, she leaned into his chest and he caught a small hint of lavender from her hair.

For the first time since he'd entered the farmhouse, Eliot smiled and relaxed, enjoying the company of the beautiful woman hed come in with. When it was time to go, he regretted not getting to spend more time with her like this.

The arrests were suitably dramatic, the reveal even more so, and Eliot made notes to look up some of the phrases Nate had used so he could get a proper sense of what had been mentioned while the culprits were being dressed down. That was his excuse for why Sophie had surprised him when he went upstairs to bring her a bottle of water. Hed assumed shed be dressed when she called him in, but after he set the bottle on the nightstand, shed tossed him a hanger and told him to stay still while she re-hung and smoothed out the dress. He didn't think she normally chose to inspect her clothes while not wearing any, but he also wasn't going to object too much to this unorthodox practice.

She circled the dress, inspecting it for any sort of wrinkle, fold, tear, or flaw, making sure to give Eliot a full turn herself so that he could see that she was similarly without defect. After she pronounced the dress ready, she took the hanger from him, told him he was a good boy, and sent him away with what she said was a shopping list for her essentials. Eliot almost threw the paper away without looking at it, but he was curious about what Sophie considered essential.

It ended up being a two-smile day for Eliot once he unfolded the paper away from the headquarters. The address on it was for a hotel that would be well away from any prying eyes, the time was comfortably late in the evening, and there was a shopping list attached. If everything went well, and he could find what was required before too late, he would enjoy spending an evening in the company of Sophie Devereaux.

"Orange juice." he read, starting to walk toward the nearest store he thought might have something to meet Sophie's exacting standards.

**Author's Note:**

> So much thanks to [AmarieMelody](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AmarieMelody) for beta reading and helping me improve the story, and [Umadoshi at Dreamwidth](umadoshi.dreamwidth.org) for giving this a spelling and grammar check so I didn't have glaring failures baked in.
> 
> The mystery of the auction objects will hopefully be a nice treat to solve. Have fun with it!


End file.
